Steam Machine Review

This little console is different - and that's a good thing

Like you, I know all kids are more addicted to gaming than they are to candy. But the problem is that most games ARE candy. So here's my review of the Steam Machine, which is another option you haven't heard of: It's very very good. Great for families - this review assumes you have three boys and also play games yourself so you already have a Steam library. In other words: Steam Machine is weird, and weird is good. Instead of playing Halo, have your kids play Goat Simulator, or a free Skiing game which is ALSO an MMO so thousands of people are skiing with you. Or have them run around protecting a baby that is trying to kill itself against strangers on the Internet. Or have them explore the ACTUAL UNIVERSE.

Downsides

First of all: it is not cheap. It is going to be anywhere from 500-900 dollars, with another hundred dollars for the extra controller you need and a wireless keyboard and mouse. For those of you who saw the commercials with the controllers, they were dead on. This is a better controller for gaming than the controllers you're used to. Every other controller makes you a sitting duck against players with a keyboard and mouse. People like to think they're going to create their own Steam Machine. But I learned long ago you cannot beat Dell when it comes to buying hardware at paper-thin margins, and then putting a working machine onto your desk.

The Controller is Amazing

You can use the Steam Controller to play Team Fortress 2 (as Heavy) perfectly well - which is a huge achievement. Or you can lay on the couch and put your wireless mouse on a book and play TF2 on your TV that way. But either way, Team Fortress 2 is a better game than Star Wars Battlefront.

It's true initially the controller was very buggy - but several firmware updates, handled seamlessly, seem to have fixed that. And the build quality is astoundingly good. It feels better than the XBox One or PS 4 controllers - by a lot. The haptic responses are incredible. This makes a difference when you have a four year old learning how to use it.

SteamOS is Great

SteamOS is great. It is a two-plug solution to getting gaming on your TV that integrates perfectly with your life. I'm not sure why anyone would complain about it - it's basically a completely duplicated version of the PS4 interface, just with Steam Games.

So about the Games. Not all the Games are good! But some are amazing and unique and beautiful. And most of them go on sale continuously and therefor you can get a set of great games for under twenty bucks.

I will list the games you should get below (I'll add to the list as things get ported over):

• Team Fortress 2 (My entire family plays together)
• Octodad (The best game ever - suitable for all ages)
• Saints Row IV (Perfectly great with the Steam Controller - funny and fast paced)
• Who's your Daddy (Hilarious game you play against random people)
• Skullgirls (2d-fighting game)
• Cities Skylines (Great for teaching kids about cities! Wouldn't you rather have your kid playing a SimCity clone than whatever their friends are playing now?)
• Goat Simulator (Hilarious)
• Half-Life 2 Pack (All of these games are classics - work great with the Controller)
• Jotun (Amazing artwork, cool game)
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (Great puzzle game)
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (2-person game - great for older kids or drunk adults)
• Never Alone (Artsy platform game - teaches your kids about Intuit culture while they play)
• Universe Sandbox (Teach your kids about the Universe! Worth it all just for this game.)

How to train a bully

So like all schools, my kids' school is half-public half-private. This means they run constant fund raisers. Of course, if they want to change the system long term, they need to be doing letter writing campaigns to increase school funding, which requires hiring a lobbyist instead of doing bake sales, helps every school instead of just your own, but whatever.

But let's go back to bullying - because like whatever school your kid goes to, mine did a big anti-bully campaign, which involved a lot of awareness that bullying is bad, including a poster contest. However, the concept of WHAT IS BULLYING is completely lost.

Let's take the current fund raiser - a walk-a-thon. I'm all for having the kids walk around outside. But in order to get money from the parents, the school has told all the kids that if they get 100% participation in a class, they get a Popsicle party. So essentially we are TRAINING THE KIDS TO BEND TO PEER PRESSURE.

Bullying, as all of you experienced it in school, is not a one-on-one situation. It is invariably a result of how kids form groups, and how peer pressure works. The bully always has a crew of people around them standing in a circle watching as they do their work. Nobody wants to raise their voice to protest.

This means that inadvertently, when we teach kids the massive value of conformity with sugary sweets it will lead only to bullying that is not stopped by even the BEST poster.

We failed in public education by splitting up the grades

Max adding black holes to a solar system

So if you want to succeed you have to take advantage of weird opportunities. For example: Universe Sandbox is 30 bucks - even if you only play it for an hour with your kids, tell me that's not worth it?

(http://universesandbox.com/) This is available for every platform, but I installed it on the Steam Machine in the living room so everyone could get involved. This is a key part of my learning strategy: While the 5yo cannot manipulate or understand the science, and the 4yo definitely cannot, they can both watch the 9yo get excited about smashing a moon into a planet.

And ideally, later on, they'll intuitively understand Space.

So much of what we've failed at in school is splitting up the grades.

 

Use this amazing thing to teach your children how gravity works...

http://imgur.com/gallery/0MdTh <---clicky clicky.